Jonathan: Prince of Dreams

by A Corrin

  I knew almost without a doubt that Peter and the others were around here somewhere close by, but it would be nice of them to show themselves before I got poked full of holes. I was quite accustomed to pain: football, snowboarding, and of course those infrequent beatings I would get from Dad had all helped to up my pain threshold. Don’t get me wrong, I so wasn’t looking forward to being skewered, but I would try and take it with as much dignity and courage as possible.

  The gargoyle hefted his trident like a javelin and aimed it at my torso. I looked away and grimaced…waiting…

  “Wait!” a voice barked. Surprised, I watched the bartender cross around in front of me. The gargoyle halted his trident by force of will. The points just barely tapped the werewolf’s chest, tilting him back.

  Withdrawing, the Ranker quivered furiously. His raven took flight and landed on a stool, croaking irritably. Horned head lowered, the Ranker growled, “How dare you stay my killing stroke! You have defied the command of Garrett and, in doing so, our Liege Master—king of death, nightmares, and power. The prince must be killed!”

  I felt the knot chafing my wrists begin to loosen. I leaned to the side to watch what the Ranker was doing around the werewolf, and at the same time caught movement out the stained-glass window in the wall slightly ahead and to the left of me. That’s where everyone was… It seemed I wasn’t alone after all.

  The bartender defended his actions. “I thought Garrett wanted to kill the boy himself.”

  The gargoyle squirmed uncomfortably and muttered, “It’s not really his call, it’s the—”

  “Liege Master’s, I know,” the bartender interrupted. “But he’s appointed Garrett to take his place and to do that, he needs Jonathan alive.”

  “Not necessarily,” the gargoyle said in a dangerous low voice. “He may just need the boy’s blood.”

  The werewolf fidgeted on the spot, his eyes searching the room, and he finally said, in an uncomfortable sort of voice, “I don’t want blood shed unnecessarily on my floor.”

  I was genuinely shocked. Did this guy actually have a conscience? The Ranker chuckled darkly, his thick shoulders shaking with mirth. “Unnecessary blood? This is the beast that entered your inn as a griffin. That shamed you by lying and wandering the streets disguised as a warrior. That slipped past your Dark Knight sentry that I so kindly posted at this forsaken bog’s entrance to stop these very people from entering. He was rummaging through your wife’s old chest, sword fighting in her garden.” He laughed again.

  The raven had hopped over to its master’s bowl and began slurping from it, keeping a beady eye on me and jabbing its beak at my pant leg when I shifted to get leverage on the bindings.

  With each accusation the Ranker made against me, the bartender’s head hung lower and lower. The gargoyle finished, “You like blood. You’re a werewolf.” And for emphasis, he drifted over to the moonlight falling in through the window.

  The bartender hugged himself and said, “It’s taking all I have not to shift forms right now. Luckily the moon has begun to wane.”

  “Yes, you see?” cried the Ranker, pointing at me triumphantly. “It is people like him that bring this curse upon you and your kind. Their mindlessly intrusive attempts at heroics only backfire upon the countless thousands they fight to protect. If it weren’t for that stupid young villager who found a scrawny malnourished ‘wolf’ wandering the swamps and treated it back to health in secret, out of the kindness of his sentimental heart, your wife would still live, you would be happily wed, and the boy who went out of his way to care for a poor creature would not be dead at its teeth. That is how all kindness is repaid. And was there vengeance on the animal? No! The beast escaped and left another in its place.”

  The bartender recoiled and looked over his shoulder at me, hurt and anger in his glowing green eyes. But suspicion had slowly crept into my mind...the gargoyle was manipulating the werewolf, using his sorrow and anguish against him. Peter had said that that’s how Rankers worked—breaking people’s spirits by going after the ones they loved. Like little lightbulbs flickering on, my thoughts all started to connect until, for the first time, I thought I understood the Rankers’ tactics—and how they had managed to corrupt the bartender.

  “Oh, come on!” I said gently, giving the poor man a pitying look. “Why is ‘gullible’ written on the ceiling?”

  I waited for one of them to glance up, and when neither did, I stretched out my legs pompously, ready to divulge my knowledge.

  “I have read in a reliable book, written by a wise scholar, that werewolves are not, in fact, swamp-dwelling creatures. They are natural to woods and deciduous forests where prey is plentiful and they can remain hidden. If anything, it sounds to me like that sick old werewolf was brought here on purpose and meant to be found and taken in. I’ll bet my sword”—which I noticed was over against the wall—“that this gargoyle brought it here, meaning for it to kill your wife, though possibly not infect you, so that you would be mentally and emotionally weak enough to do whatever he wanted for whatever false promises he made you.”

  The Ranker was giving me looks of fury and loathing. Obviously, I wasn’t too far off the mark, if at all. I felt bad picking on the bartender like that, but he needed this—closure. Justice. It was nice to play a part in giving him that. Especially when the creep who had ruined his life was standing right there in front of him, glowering at me.

  “You…you have a point…” the bartender said meditatively. He eyed the gargoyle, showing his sharp teeth in a wild scowl, and started a fresh argument with him. I lost all focus on the conversation: I had an idea. The gargoyle was ready to go Conan the Barbarian on me with his trident, and I needed a big distraction.

  I scooched my chair little by little to the left, away from the Bowl of Bemusement. The raven belched and looked up from the meal it was enjoying to watch the werewolf poke the Ranker bravely in the chest a few times while bellowing in his face. I teetered side to side, building up momentum, the chair legs loudly clunking on the floor. But the Ranker had begun to shout back and was beyond hearing me. The raven was flapping, bloated with soup, around the bartender, harassing his tangled hair with its talons. I rocked hard to the right and fell over with a tremendous thud.

  I had moved far enough to the side so that my face smashed right into the rest of the stew. The foul liquid ran up my nose and in my eyes, burning. I took a mouthful and held it, though it stung my tongue like peppers. Already it was quickening my heart rate and racing my blood. If I swallowed, it would turn me into the same crazy lunatic that was kicked out of the bar last evening.

  My actions had finally caught attention, and the Ranker shoved past the bartender and rudely lifted the chair back on its feet. The werewolf pushed in beside the gargoyle so that both of their angry faces took up my vision.

  The Ranker scowled. “Don’t think you can—” He broke off, obviously wondering why my cheeks were puffed out.

  I flicked my eyebrows up and down at him, turned to the bartender, and spat my mouthful into his face. The werewolf cried out, his hands flying to his eyes. His voice deepened into a harsh roar—like a noise from a nightmare. Long, wavy black fur sprouted weed-like from his pores, bursting from the fabric of his clothes. A bushy tail came from the seat of his pants, his jaws lengthened, his head hair shrank back and became a grizzly mane about his chest and neck. By the time the bartender had finished transforming, he was the size of a bear with strength rippling in the muscles of his legs and sides.

  I had read that if someone stared at a werewolf, the eye contact would aggravate it and push it into attacking. So, I looked away. But, uh-oh…the Ranker didn’t. He was gaping at the monster before him with shock and alarm. Snarling, the wolf leaped at the gargoyle, slamming him into the bar. The lei was forced off the Ranker’s neck, landing on the floor. The raven flew around their heads, cawing repeatedly.

  With a burst of splintered wood, P
eter swooped through the doorway in griffin form. He spread his wings to brake and, with precise aim, sliced the ropes tying my wrists with a large talon. I shouldered the bonds off over my head, massaging my arms.

  The werewolf yelped and backed into a corner. A jagged cut ran from his chest to his back from the bloodied tips of the Ranker’s trident. The gargoyle regained his balance, perched hunched over on the bar just like the gothic stone sentinel that he was. His red eyes zeroed in on me standing free beside my empty chair, and then landed on Peter.

  Peter’s huge, brown-feathered body was low as if to pounce, and he shrieked challengingly. The gargoyle bared his teeth and hissed. Pushing off the bar, he bowled Peter over. The two somersaulted into a wall, where Peter shattered one of the windows with his wing, and the two began fighting for death grips in a shower of colorful glass shards.

  I grabbed my sword, strapped it on, and put the lei back in my pocket.

  The werewolf whimpered, watching the primal violence of the conflict now tearing up his bar. He licked at his long, bloody wound, then limped out into the street, where sounds of struggle were beginning to wake up the bog dwellers. People started screaming. Guns were fired. (I guessed from the squadron since the villagers didn’t have enough gun-powder to shoot off their pinkie toes.) Fire started mysteriously writhing to life from random places, lighting up the streets in yellow and red light.

  People were running by, children tucked under their parent’s arms or torn away by the rampaging crowds. Kayle flew by, his burly griffin form as dark as the night. He gave a harsh eagle cry and corrected the path of one wandering child with a scoop forward from his wing. Mariah was diving to strike with her talons at an amassing group of armor-clad Dark Knights. Two were tangled up in knots of thorny vines that Mariah was sprouting up with her power. The squadron was spread out and hidden behind houses and barrels of water, readying their weapons and signaling commands to each other.

  The raven came out of nowhere.

  It burst into my face with a formidable caw and a beat of its feathers. One of its hooked little talons grazed my eyelid, but not hard enough to draw blood. I turned away, shielding my eyes with an upraised arm. The raven wrapped its feet around my limb and began to peck viciously at any part of me I allowed it to reach.

  Desperate, I clenched my other hand around the hand-guard of my sword, blindly feeling for the switchblade handle. Once I’d grasped it, I flung it open, pinned the raven against the wall with the arm it had perched on, and stabbed deep into its chest. The bird emitted a horrible high-pitched croak, flapped its wings feebly, and fell dead to the floor with a dull thump.

  I hastily shook the droplets of blood from my knife, drying each side of it on the legs of my jeans. I put it back in its compartment and this time drew my sword.

  It crashed to the floor, totally bursting my bubble. So much for cool and in control.

  I had never killed a thing in my life, except for maybe the occasional bug or two, or the grouse I’d hunted from a distance. And now I had just sliced open a bird up close and personal and wiped its blood on my clothes! Pretty soon, I’d be catching fish with my teeth or something, like a complete barbarian.

  To compensate for my atrocious crime of actually murdering a bird, I said to its lifeless body, “That’s for impersonating my mom.”

  The gargoyle seemed to be slowly gaining the upper hand. His trident had cut several places on Peter’s body, and the old griffin was wheezing for air.

  I raised my arms and snuck forward, aiming to slash straight down into the Ranker’s spine, but without even looking, the gargoyle kicked back and knocked me to the floor with an aching chest. I put my hand on my sternum, feeling for damage, and then retreated to one side to rethink my plans.

  Two Dark Knights slipped in, holding a weighted net between them. When the Ranker had cornered Peter, the two swung it over him, and he got tangled in the corded ropes. Almost as soon as he was trapped, Peter started biting at his restraints, snapping holes that were stretching increasingly wider the harder he pushed out with his pinned wings. The Dark Knights stood with swords out and ready should Peter escape.

  The gargoyle swept out his cloak (dark and cliché) and spun to me. I tried to raise my sword; the task had become doubly difficult with my bruised chest muscles.

  “Now we will see just how brave you are, little griffin,” the Ranker hissed. His voice was almost rendered unintelligible by the hatred twisting his words. “Will you weep and beg as you did so many times in your nightmares?”

  “You don’t know me,” I spat.

  The Ranker charged, aiming to thrust his trident up into my guts, but I caught it on the edge of my sword and managed to redirect it past me. I shuffled around him, alert, my muscles tensed and my nerves jingling with energy.

  “I only know what I have witnessed,” he replied. There was something oily and clever in his voice now. “My creator spent long years carefully crafting me, committing the atrocities that would feed me, nurture me. Eventually I became strong enough to take a form, to act independently of him and begin creating my own nightmares in the minds of humans. But I could not have known the significance of his final act. His final murder.”

  The Ranker’s eyes danced. “We knew who she was, of course, my fellow Rankers and me. Your kind may be ignorant to the constant battle waging among humans, the battle between Ranker and Griffin, but not us, the creations of darkness. When my creator snuffed so bright a light as hers, oh, how we celebrated.” He licked his lips as if relishing a delicious meal.

  I stared at him. And in one heartbeat, I understood.

  “You killed my mother,” I breathed.

  “No,” he said, “Your mother was killed by a man.”

  I took him in; the height of him, the lifeless eyes, the stony skin and shark-like smile and in those features, if I tried, I could pick out the features of a human. A man. The man who had murdered my mother.

  I could feel the blood leave my face and I stumbled on the spot, having to quickly lock my legs and brace my feet before I sank to the floor.

  “Yes, now you understand,” the gargoyle whispered.

  I did understand, much better now. Until now I had seen the conflict with the Rankers as nothing more than that—a storybook battle between good and evil, against monsters that fed on wickedness. But that was only half-right. The Rankers were terrible, sure, and their influence was broad. But when it came down to it, they were just creations. The true power, the real evil, lay with their creators. With dreamers. With humans. And that realization, that the bulk of the threat in the Ranker war came not from an outside source but from within every man, woman, and child, from the darkness they allowed to develop inside them, chilled me to my core.

  “They killed your creator,” I said weakly, trying to kick my brain back into gear. But my entire body felt like lead now.

  He shrugged. “And we lost a valuable tool. But I had become independent from him, and could continue my own work in the minds of your kind. We hadn’t anticipated Esther’s son becoming the next prince,” he said this snidely. “We suspected as much, when rumors began to spread that the White Griffin had chosen another, and your name started to cross lips, but we couldn’t know for sure. But with Esther’s light being so bright, I suppose it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise. Talk about coincidence, eh?

  “So,” he raised the trident and gave it a shake as if to remind me that it was there. “Now you know. Do you truly feel brave, little prince?”

  “Jonathan, look out!” Peter barked. I whipped my head around to see one of the Dark Knights striding toward me with his weapon lifted.

  But it was at that moment that Kayle decided to drop in.

  He shot in through the hole Peter had made; only, Kayle was on fire. Like, literally.

  His eyes were molten yellow orbs; smoke billowed from his beak in black clouds. Tongues of furnace-hot hea
t wafted from his flickering body. “Good morning, sunshine!” he screamed at the gargoyle in a distorted, crackling voice.

  For some reason, his words stirred something in me, and my coral necklace turned warm at my neck.

  Kayle landed, but his paws didn’t set anything on fire unless he wanted them to. He jerked out with his beak and caught a mouthful of the Ranker’s cloak. The material made a ripping sound as it was stretched.

  I, meanwhile, was about to remove my necklace should it grow too hot to endure. But instead of burning up, tendrils of its warmth spread up my neck, into my face, and behind my eyeballs into my brain. It was like a door had been opened: I knew how to control my ability to shift.

  Concentrating on that knowledge, I hastily turned into a griffin, taking a brief moment to stretch my powerful new muscles and get reacquainted with how to move. My weapons were gone, but I no longer needed them. My daggers were my talons, sickle-shaped and needle-sharp. My sword was my beak, hooked like an eagle’s and a foot long.

  Kayle saw that I was strong enough to kick some gargoyle butt and darted away to attack the knights guarding Peter.

  The Ranker gripped his trident and circled me. I turned with him, keeping him in my sights. And then another strange thing happened: he told me what he was going to do right before he did it.

  The Ranker puffed in a labored voice, “I’ll go for his eyes.”

  I stepped to one side just as the prongs of his trident appeared where my face had been moments before. He stumbled, off-balance by my dodge, and I slashed out with my talons, ripping five gashes in the hem of his robe. I gritted my beak when I felt unyielding stone under my claws.

  How could I kill something made of rock?

  “I’ll come around at his back!” the Ranker declared. He arched his spine and twisted, gracefully gouging down with his weapon. I snapped my wings wide, buffeting the monster back and knocking the trident from his hands. I took the weapon up in my mouth and bit down hard. The metal screeched and bent into an upside-down U shape. I dropped it to the floor where it rang hollowly, virtually useless.